Tower into the buttery
and brought into the hall a manchet (or small loaf) upon the point of a
knife, he was pardoned; for the buttery in this jovial season was
considered as a sanctuary. Then began the _revels_. Blount derives this
term from the French _reveiller_, to awake from sleep. These were sports
of dancing, masking comedies, &c. (for some were called solemn revels,)
used in great houses, and were so denominated because they were
performed by night; and these various pastimes were regulated by a
master of the revels.

Amidst "the grand Christmass," a personage of no small importance was
"the Lord of Misrule." His lordship was abroad early in the morning, and
if he lacked any of his officers, he entered their chambers to drag
forth the loiterers; but after breakfast his lordship's power ended, and
it was in suspense till night, when his personal presence was paramount,
or, as Dugdale expresses it, "and then his power is most potent."

Such were then the pastimes of the whole learned bench; and when once it
happened that the under-barristers did not dance on Candlemas day,
according to the ancient order of the society, when the judges were
present, the whole bar was offended, and at Lincoln's-Inn were by
decimation put out of commons, for example sake; and should the same
omission be repeated, they were to be fined or disbarred; for these
dancings were thought necessary, "as much conducing to the making of
gentlemen more fit for their books at other times," I cannot furnish a
detailed notice of these pastimes; for Dugdale, whenever he indicates
them, spares his gravity from recording the evanescent frolics, by a
provoking _&c. &c. &c._

The dance "round about the coal-fire" is taken off in the _Rehearsal_.
These revels have also been ridiculed by Donne in his Satires, Prior in
his Alma, and Pope in his Dunciad. "The judge to dance, his brother
serjeants calls."[136]

"The Lord of Misrule," in the inns of court, latterly did not conduct
himself with any recollection of "_Medio tutissimus ibis_," being
unreasonable; but the "sparks of the Temple," as a contemporary calls
them, had gradually, in the early part of Charles the First's reign,
yielded themselves up to excessive disorders. Sir Symonds D'Ewes, in his
MS. diary in 1620, has noticed their choice of a lieutenant, or lord of
misrule, who seems to have practised all the mischief he invented; and
the festival days, when "a standing table was kept," were acco